CITY INSIDER / No big plays over 49ers stadium plan

The Santa Clara City Council meets today to likely approve key parts of the 49ers move south, but don’t expect San Francisco to throw a Hail Mary pass.

We told you last week that Planning Commissioner Mike Antonini, a 49ers season ticket holder for decades, had put a major architectural firm known for its stadium designs in touch with Mayor Ed Lee‘s administration to flesh out the city’s idea for moving the 49ers to Hunters Point. The firm envisions an all-weather stadium with a retractable roof that seats about 70,000 people and shows off the city’s stunning skyline.

Lee doesn’t sound remotely interested in Antonini’s plan.

“All my meetings with (49ers owner) Jed York have been very positive, and we’re keeping a very good dialogue,” Lee said Monday. “But I can’t comment on Mr. Antonini’s stuff unless he’s come up with some $400 million check from somewhere that I don’t know about.”

Antonini says Lee should at least privately raise the less than $1 million it would take to hire the firm so the plans could be drawn up and shown to York rather than crossing his fingers that the Santa Clara stadium deal will fall through, which seems to be the current plan.

“With all due respect to the mayor, I just don’t think that’s the way to do things,” Antonini said.

Couldn’t Antonini lead the fundraising charge?

“Well, I don’t know,” he said with a big laugh. “I’m a dentist and a planning commissioner, and I’m helping to get my wife a new kitchen. I don’t know if I’m quite in the league to do that.”

– Heather Knight

Safety changes: UCSF shuttles have been outfitted with seat belts and tagged with safety signs and hotline numbers, and some are moving a little slower in response to a July accident that killed a UCSF doctor on his way to work.

Seat belts are not required by law in shuttle vehicles, but UCSF has added lap belts in all shuttle vehicles, Senior Vice Chancellor John Plotts wrote Monday in an e-mail to people associated with UCSF.

Additionally, signs have been added on the inside and outside of all vehicles reading “Safety is my goal,” displaying a vehicle identification number and advertising a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week telephone hotline to field complaints, compliments or concerns about shuttle safety. Schedules on some shuttle routes have been adjusted to allow drivers more time.

Kevin Allen Mack, 52, a UCSF psychiatrist with an office at San Francisco General Hospital, was killed and four people were injured when a university shuttle en route to the hospital collided with a 2007 Peterbilt tractor-trailer carrying four cars in Hayes Valley. Witnesses told police the shuttle had run a red light. Mack was thrown from the shuttle.

– Michael Cabanatuan

Promoted: We can only imagine being called into the office for a promotion and being celebrated with the playing of bagpipes, a color guard, the singing of the national anthem and a stirring speech from the mayor. In fact, we can only imagine being promoted at all.

But 38 members of the San Francisco Police Department enjoyed just such a display of pomp and circumstance Monday at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center where they were promoted to the ranks of deputy chief, commander, captain, lieutenant and sergeant.

Mayor Ed Lee said he got “a little bit of goosebumps just being there.” He then issued a warning to the honorees: “Given the tight budget, you’re going to have to keep trim because we’re not going to be able to buy new uniforms,” he said. “Lay off the pastries, OK?”

Before swearing in the honorees, Chief Greg Suhr noted the many changes in the department. He said the oldest members of the department were hired during the Vietnam War when they were required to live in the city, earned a pittance, had to work 15 of 17 days before earning a weekend, and nobody had yet heard of e-mail, cell phones or Twitter.

Now, he said, police officers don’t have to live in the city, they enjoy some of the highest salaries and pensions in the country, and they have cell phones and e-mail. But he said some of that old-school mentality was worthwhile.

“Not everyone thinks friending someone is a Facebook term,” he said, noting the officers and their families are now part of one big community.